


What I Want

by doctornerdington



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: F/F, First Time, Masturbation, No Strings Attached, Sex, team katniss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-29
Updated: 2014-10-29
Packaged: 2018-02-23 03:51:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2533106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctornerdington/pseuds/doctornerdington
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Johanna teaches Katniss the value of wanting something for herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What I Want

**Author's Note:**

> Set mid-Mockingjay.

_The untold want, by life and land ne’er granted,_  
 _Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find._  
\-- Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

 _To want is to have a weakness._  
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

 

I don’t know what possessed me to agree to share quarters with Johanna during combat training. Maybe it’s that she’s broken too. I don’t have to put up a front around her, like I do with my mother and Prim. I don’t have to be strong for her. She knows exactly how weak I am, and I know the same of her. We’re made for each other, in a way that eats at my stomach every time I look at her.

The first day is awkward. We sit together during the designated recreation and socialization period, not speaking, like we’ve never had friends before. And who knows? Could be she’s had even fewer than me. She paces, trailing her fingers over the few surfaces of furniture in the bare-bones quarters. I notice that she lingers over the latch to my personal drawer, the place I squirrel away the things I value, the few possessions I want to keep.

I think how there’s nothing in Johanna’s drawers but her government-issued clothes. That she doesn’t have one thing in the world to call her own. “It’s okay,” I say. “You can look at my stuff if you want.”

Johanna scoffs lightly, in a way I’ve come to recognize is something like a reflex for her. She pulls open the drawer anyway. Unlatches my locket, studying the pictures of Gale, Prim, and my mother. She opens the silver parachute and pulls out the spile and slips it onto her pinkie. “Makes me thirsty just looking at it,” she drawls. Then she finds the pearl Peeta gave me. “Is this—?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Made it through somehow.” I don’t want to talk about Peeta. I don’t want to talk about anything in my drawer, come to think of it. Letting her look had been a bad idea. Every item represents an obligation, someone depending on me for something I’m not sure I’ll be able to deliver. Someone I could easily fail. I get up and slide the drawer shut. Maybe government-issued anonymity would be preferable, come to that.

* * * * *

Something changed between us in the hospital. We’ve never liked each other, that’s for sure, and we don’t exactly like each other now. But for some reason, without seeking each other out, we often end up together. I look up, and Johanna is beside me. Or I grab my tray for my evening meal, and find I’ve taken a seat beside her.

At first, I assumed it was because I gave her the morphling. I couldn’t wait to get that poison out of my veins, and Johanna couldn’t suck it up fast enough. But it can’t have only been that, because even now, when she’s weaning herself off the drug, it still happens. We’re still thrown together. In terrifyingly short order, it starts to feel wrong when she’s not around, and I’m not sure that I like it.

* * * * *

About a week into our new living arrangements, I wake in the middle of the night with my heart pounding; I’m instantly alert and out of bed, dropping instinctively to a crouch and silently scanning the darkened room for a threat. There’s nothing.

I hear rustling from Johanna’s bed – a slight, rhythmic movement of skin on fabric. A moan, quickly bitten off. That must be what had woken me. Aside from the quiet, steady breaths of Prim and my mother, I can’t sleep through any human noises anymore. Some part of me is always watching.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“Oh Kat-breath,” she says to the darkness. She’s breathless. “Nothing’s wrong. Every once in a while, there’s nothing wrong.”

I digest that, the satisfaction in her voice. She sounds more relaxed than she has since they started weaning her off the morphling – maybe even longer than that. Her breathing is slowing now, deep and languorous. I stand up awkwardly, and my eyes adjust to the dark. Johanna’s kicked her covers off, and I see the silhouette of her small body against the pale bedclothes; she’s sprawled out on her back, legs open, knees up. Slowly, she stretches, arching up and straightening. With a jolt I realize what she’s been doing.

“Were you just…?” I don’t know how to finish the question. I am shocked to my core and trying not to show it.

In the dark, I hear her swallow.

“Is it a problem?”

I don’t answer, since I don’t know.

I’m back in my bed, staring at the dark ceiling, when she asks quietly, “Do you ever…?”

I shake my head; know she’ll see it, even in the near-darkness. “Not anymore. Not for a long time.” My cheeks are burning; I’m glad that, at least, is concealed from her quick eyes.

She muffles a groan of sympathetic frustration. “With those two fighting over you, tooth and nail? No wonder you’re so wound up.”

Soon, I hear her breathing even out. She sleeps deeply and silently for an uninterrupted six hours.

I lie silent and still for the rest of the night, but I’m not seeing the ceiling above me as it slowly, gradually lightens in some community planner’s approximation of dawn. I’m thinking back to the whispers and snickers in the schoolyard, when I was a kid in District 12. Thinking of the lewd jokes I overheard the older boys tell – jokes I barely understood, but knew never to repeat. Thinking about the beginnings of my awareness of myself as a woman. I knew people pleasured themselves. I’d even done it myself a few times, a long time ago, when I still had the luxury of private moments in my own bedroom, or out in the forest on a hunt. I thought of my favourite place: the beautiful little lake a day’s walk out from 12, where my father used to take me before he died. Thought of my last trip to that lake before my reaping, how I had slipped, naked, under the rippling surface, and felt entirely, blissfully alone. Thought of the tingle that started up on the surface of my skin, a deepening vibration everywhere the water touched me; how it washed over and into me, how it centered between my legs when I pressed them together, and how it overtook me when I touched myself there, under the water, writing helpless pleasure from every inch of my body. I hadn’t thought of that day in a long time.

* * * * *

To my great surprise, in the morning, some of the awkwardness of our first days together seems to have passed. Johanna dresses quickly, runs her fingers over the soft fuzz of hair that’s finally starting to appear on her head, doesn’t look at her face in the small plastic mirror that’s screwed to the wall. The sultry, flirty girl I met last year at the training center is almost entirely gone. I wonder if she even recognizes herself anymore. Any more than I do. When I sit to slip on my boots, she comes to stand behind me, lifting and stroking the single braid that still runs down my back. Does she miss her hair, I wonder? I feel her lean down, her cheek close beside mine, but she’s not flirting this time. She’s almost comforting when she whispers in my ear, “What do you want, Katniss?”

“I don’t…”

“Aside from all of this –” her gesture takes in our quarters, the district, the war, all of Panem from what I can gather. “Apart from it. What do you want?”

I think for a minute, but an immense weight of exhaustion settles over me when I think of the futility of her question. “What could it possibly matter, what I want?”

She shrugs and stands straight again, drifts away.

What do I want? It’s been so long since anyone has asked me that; I’ve forgotten that it’s possible to want things other than basic survival. Revenge. Oblivion. I don’t know how to answer, and for some reason, I don’t feel like lying to her. I don’t know how long I sit, thinking about what it might feel like to want something for myself, but when I look up, she’s gone.

* * * * *

Training is tedious and exhausting, but at least we’re making progress. Every day, I feel myself getting stronger, faster, sharper. I see the same in Johanna, although the small amount of morphling that’s still in her bloodstream must be weighing her limbs, slowing her mind, making it doubly hard for her to keep up. I try to keep my focus on each drill, but my mind returns obsessively to her question. I don’t know why it has unsettled me so much, but now that she’s asked, I can’t stop thinking about it. About what it would be like to be a 17-year-old girl who’s allowed to want things for herself.

I wouldn’t even know where to start.

* * * * *

“I don’t know what I want,” I admit to her a few days later, all in a rush.

We’re sitting together once again during recreation and socialization period; this, too, is getting easier. The stiffness of our earlier conversations is almost gone. We sit together, now, on the low bunk that runs along our front wall. I have my arms wrapped around me and my knees pulled up tight; Johanna is sprawled everywhere else. How does such a tiny person take up so much space? “I can’t let myself. It doesn’t matter. What I want – it doesn’t matter.” It’s hard to admit this; to get the words out.

“No,” she agrees. At least she’s honest. Her leg is warm against mine. “It doesn’t matter. Not to anyone else. But wanting something for yourself, even something idiotic like getting yourself off in the middle of the night, when no one can stop you from taking all the pleasure your beat-up body can still feel?” She looks at me, sidelong, with a sly little smile playing on her lips. “Sometimes…” she trails off. Rolls her eyes. She doesn’t know how to talk about this either. I find this strangely comforting. “Sometimes that does matter,” she finishes simply. “At least, it does to me.” She lowers her eyes, then, as if she’s just offered a gift, and she’s not sure whether I’ll like it.

I wait for her eyes to rise again to meet mine, and nod slightly when they do. I want her to see that I understand, or that I’m trying to.

* * * * *

That night, I lie in my bed and think of everyone who wants or needs something from me. The list is longer than I can finish before I’m asleep, caught immediately in dreams of impossible expectations, and the disasters that inevitably follow when I fail.

I startle awake, and lie for a moment just trying to regulate my heart and my breathing. I know from the level of darkness in the room that it’s either very late or very early. Doesn’t really matter which; either way, I won’t be sleeping again.

And then I hear her, noticeably louder than she had been that first night. There’s a rhythmic rustling of the standard-issue 13 blanket, quick, heated breaths that turn slowly into gasps, an occasional slight moan, as if she can’t quite keep it in.

I feel a warmth creep through me. Wonder what exactly she’s doing: where she’s touching herself, and how. I realize my hands have clenched into fists, and consciously relax. There’s no threat here, but my body is rusty, so unused to any kind of non-combat stimulation that it barely knows how to respond to this.

I roll onto my back, and the creaking of my bed signals my wakefulness through the room as clearly as if I had spoken. The sounds stop, to my disappointment. But thirty seconds later they start again, slower and more purposefully than before.

An invitation.

I hesitate only briefly – after all, why not? I decide to try an experiment. I start with just my fingertips, swirling them over my cheeks, my throat, my collarbones. It’s a strange feeling, to be concentrating solely on making myself feel good. I try to think of the last time I’ve used my body for my own pleasure, and can’t. It’s been years. My fingers draw small vibrations of pleasure from my skin; something in the pit of my stomach warms, but my skin pricks into goosebumps, and I shiver. I don’t want to stop, so I don’t.

Impatiently, I pull my soft sleeping tunic up high on my chest. My hands wander lower now, gliding lightly over my hips, my stomach, my breasts. It feels… I don’t know. I try to focus on my body, on how it feels, and banish all other thoughts from my mind. I trace a finger across my breasts, again. And again. Realize I’m sighing. When I pinch myself there, the sighs turn to gasps. My nipples must be wired directly to my brain, to my sex. Interesting. I lick my fingers, needing some slick, and return my attention to my breasts; pinching, twisting, pulling slightly. In very short order, I lose track of myself under pulsating waves of something… Something I can’t describe. I feel like I’m buzzing, like my blood is more alive than it usually is.

With each new twist and pull, I bite my lip so hard I’m tasting blood; I realize I don’t have to be quiet. She certainly isn’t – her breathing interspersed with low moans and an occasional, whispered curse. Again, I consciously relax. Lick my lips and loosen my jaw, and return my attention to my breasts. It’s getting easier, now, to focus on myself, on the feelings inside me. When I touch both nipples at the same time, everything intensifies even further, and I gasp aloud. Across the room, I hear Johanna moan quietly, as if in response.

I’ve been pressing my legs together since I started; I realize now I’m practically writhing against myself on the bed. This gives me ideas, and I let my right hand trail lazily lower and lower, while my left hand continues to toy with my breast.

I press my hand between my legs, thrusting my hips experimentally once or twice against my own strength. It isn’t enough, and I pull my nondescript underclothes aside in frustration, tracing up and down the slit between my legs. It almost tickles, almost itches, but in the sensation I feel the promise of something more. The sounds from across the room are coming louder and faster now, a constant litany of gasping breaths: “oh god. Fuck. Oh god.” Her voice sounds so sweet. I imagine what she must look like now, to sound like that.

I slide my finger in, slightly, parting my lower lips to feel the place where I’m slippery and wet. Everything is slick, and I can’t stop myself from moving there, pressing, teasing, flicking. Can’t stifle my own moan when my fingers slide over a pert little mound of flesh that causes lightning flashes of sensation to radiate out through all my limbs. My fingers return, again and again, and something stirs inside me. I twist my hand around slightly, and find I can slide a finger deep inside myself while my thumb lingers on the nub of pleasure above. Answering sounds from across the room reassure me, and spur me on.

One finger inside; then two, then three, my thumb traces quickening circles over the tiny nub that gives me most pleasure. My belly is tight with --- I don’t know what. With wanting. It’s not enough, what I’m feeling, and I speed my hand. The other moves more roughly on my breast, twisting. Distantly, I’m aware that I’m making the same sounds that she is, now: our voices rising in a syncopated cadence. My lower hand must be a blur, flapping hard against my sex. My hips thrust up, again and again, and I can barely continue through the cresting feelings surging through me. I curl up as the pleasure takes me. I think I might be sobbing.

And then. My mind is blessedly blank, filled with an expanding pleasure that seems limitless. I realize I’m slowly circling my hips on the bed; tiny aftershocks still run through my body. I take a deep, shuddering breath.

Across the room, Johanna is silent already. I was so deep into myself at the end, there, that I didn’t even notice when she found her pleasure.

We lie in the darkness, panting. We don’t speak. After a while, I hear her roll over, and then all is silent. I should be basking in the afterglow, I suppose, but now that the pleasure has passed, I’m already regretting my impulsivity. What had I let myself in for? What will she want from me now? The pleasant warmth in my belly is replaced with ugly, anxious flutters. The last thing I need in my life is another complication. Another Gale, another Peeta. Another snare.

* * * * *

The next morning, I’m up and out of our quarters before Johanna has time to do much more than open her eyes. My mind is racing, I’ve barely slept, and my body feels overheated, over-filled, like I don’t quite fit into my own skin anymore.

All day, I throw myself into training, trying to exhaust myself back into the blank torpor that has become my survival mode. I run until my legs are shaking, and then another few miles more. It doesn’t touch the itch under my skin. I practice with my bow, I spar, I run drills with the rest of the team, and then I run some more – until there’s nothing for it but to collapse in a sweaty heap along the retaining wall we’ve adopted as our base for the day’s activities, and catch my breath.

“Hey,” a voice near me says.

I look up, through lank straggles of hair. Damn it, I’ve done it again: my traitorous limbs have delivered me right to her.

“Hey,” I reply, tilting my head back against the wall and closing my eyes.

“That looked pretty intense out there.” She sounds entirely collected, and when I crack my eyes open to glance over, her usual sly smile is on her face.

“Yeah, it was. Training. You know,” I finish lamely. She leans over, knocks my shoulder gently with her own.

“Yeah. I gotcha.” I don’t ask what, exactly, she gets. Whatever it is, I’m pretty sure I’m way behind her. We sit together in silence for a while, watching the rest of the team finish up for the day and pack away their weapons. It doesn’t occur to me to ask why she’s sitting out – everything she does, she does it like it’s her god-given right.

After a while, she offers me her water bottle. I drink deeply.

“Thanks,” I say, handing it back.

She shrugs. “It’s nothing.” I watch her raise the bottle to her own lips and down the remainder.

After a while, she stands and wanders off without a word. I sit and think for a long time in the dwindling light.

* * * * *

That night is different. Johanna slips into my bed as soon as the lights are lowered for the designated sleep period. She’s wearing just her underclothes – the soft cotton camisole and briefs we were issued when we arrived – and her body is warm pressed up beside me under the covers. Before I can even formulate a response, she rises up on her elbow and looms over me. “I’m not leaving without an answer tonight, Katniss. What do you want?”

Her breath on my face is fragrant and warm, and she's so tiny the bed barely dips under her when she moves.

“I want to feel good,” I say immediately. At least I’ve figured one thing out. I leave the rest unspoken: I do not want to feel guilt, fear, pain.

I want to feel good. For a minute or an hour. (For the rest of my life.) That is what I want. It feels selfish to say it, weak and wrong to want anything at all, when so many are dead because of me – or anyway, because of the Mockingjay. They can’t want anything ever again, can they? And yet, I’m too invested now fight it. I think that maybe this is what she’s been trying to show me: the rebellion of pleasure. And despite my nerves, I can’t quite bear to stifle it now that she has lit the fuse.

I want.

Johanna looks deep into my eyes, as if she’s weighing my honesty. She leans forward, carefully and slowly, giving me lots of time to back away, and presses a kiss against my closed lips. She withdraws again, her eyes on me.

I don’t move. I’m on the edge of a precipice, and it feels dangerous.

“Katniss,” she says quietly. “We can enjoy each other. We can feel good. Together. It doesn’t mean anything more than that. We don’t have to get married, you know.”

I don’t understand what she's trying to tell me, and I pull away slightly so I can see her face properly. She looks puzzled, but also patient.

“Wait a minute,” she says, starting up a bit, “is that what your idiot boyfriends have been telling you? Is that why you’ve been so…?" She frowns, crinkling her nose. "What have they been doing to you – pledging undying love while you’re trying to win this fucking war? Jesus, Katinss! Those fucking selfish bastards.” She looks away in disgust.

I'm surprised at her vehemence. I want to defend them, but thinking about it just exhausts me. “Don’t talk about them,” I say, and I mean for it to be commanding, but it comes out more like a plea.

Her face softens at that. “Sure.” She sighs. “Sure. I won’t talk about them if you don’t think about them. Deal?”

I’ve never agreed to anything so quickly in my life.

“Think about yourself,” she says. “What you want. Not them. Not me. I’m happy to take care of myself back in my own bed, if that’s what works for you. Think about what you want. Right now.”

She doesn’t need me. Doesn’t need me for this – not for anything. This realization crashes over me like a warm wave.

I lean forward, slowly, and kiss her back. Her lips are soft and pliant against mine, but she quickly opens her mouth, and things get hot and wet between us. When I feel her tongue on me, tracing my lips and then dipping in, I groan, brokenly, into her kiss. She pulls back, concerned, but I’m long past the point of no return, and I press against her once more, opening her mouth with my own, and raising a hand to cup her breast. She moves against me then, arching when I roll her nipple between my fingers, feeling it spring erect under the thin fabric.

She threads her hand into my hair, which is a mess of uncombed tangles, since I hadn’t bothered to brush it out after training today, and tilts my head slightly to the side, giving her access to kiss me deeper. She yanks my head back and licks a stripe up my neck, startling me into a laugh that immediately turns to a gasp when she bites down softly at my pulse point. I kiss her back, then, hard, and she grabs at my breast, palming it, kneading it slightly, and then catching the nipple between her fingers. I groan aloud. The freedom in this is exhilarating.

She leans into me, then, pushing me back against my pillow, kissing down my throat and then just breathing over my breasts, hovering as she looks her fill. She bends and takes a nipple in her mouth, sucking gently. I gasp as she begins a delicate nibble, the flash of teeth makes me shiver, and I grasp blindly at her head, holding her to me as she laves at one side, and then the other. I trace my hands up and across her shoulders, her warm, silky skin setting off sparks under my hands.

I’m wet now. So wet, I can feel moisture soaking through to the sheet underneath me. This has never happened to me before, but… I like it. I squirm my hips up against her, in the dark, and she huffs out a laugh of her own. “Fast learner, aren’t you?”

“Shut up,” I whisper back, and I reach for her breast, pinching a nipple for good measure.

She sits up then, and repositions me.

“I feel like a doll,” I laugh, and she looks up at me from under her thick eyelashes, flashing a grin.

“Don’t knock experience, babe,” she says, and I don’t. I’m grateful that one of us knows what she’s doing.

Perfunctorily, she strips out of her underthings, and pulls me out of mine. When she’s done, I’m leaning back in the bed, propped naked against the wall with my legs crossed loosely in front of me. With a wicked smirk, she crawls up me, sitting in my lap and wrapping her legs around my waist. She’s so small; has to reach slightly to kiss me again. I like the feel of her lips on mine, I decide, and I like having her so close. She’s tiny, but only in stature.

She kisses me again with her hands in my hair, and presses herself down into my lap. For long minutes we grind together. Her legs tighten as our arousal increases. Our breasts rub against each other, and when nipples catch it elicits delicious gasps. I snake my hands around her hips and pull her more firmly against me, our sexes pressing together, our bodies aligned.

She is lost in her own world now, writhing in my lap.

Our breaths mingle, along with our moans. This feeling pleases us both, and I grasp her more firmly to guide her movements. Faster. Faster now. My hands can almost span her waist. Faster and harder. Her breasts bounce against me as she moves. The feeling I remember from before, the infinite, expanding pleasure, starts to build. I can see it on the horizon; I’m reaching for it, straining against Johanna and toward it, when she pulls back suddenly, breaking my concentration.

I groan in frustration. “What are you..?”

She just smiles, though, disheveled and pink. Shifts backwards in my lap. Eyes locked with mine, she raises a hand and takes her index finger into her mouth, wetting it thoroughly. I shiver when I see her intention; could have told her the extra lubrication isn’t necessary. And then she reaches down and thrusts her finger inside me, deep as she can in this position. Her eyes widen when she feels me, and she smiles her sly, pleased little smile. I try to focus, but I can’t – my eyes close involuntarily, and I lean back against the wall while she thrusts into me, hard and fast. Her breath is coming quickly now, almost in pants, and I’m gasping breathlessly, arching my neck.

I feel it rising within me, finally, a bird fluttering in and out of reach as my body thrusts up against her. Her head forward falls against me, and she bites my shoulder, hard. It hurts, but it doesn’t, and I buck up harder into her, almost lifting her off the bed with each thrust.

While she’s inside me, then, I reach my free hand down between us and stroke the tiny nub of blinding pleasure just above the place where her fingers enter me. Johanna smiles. “A good idea is a good idea.” She mirrors my movements, reaches to stroke herself. So this is what she had been doing those nights in her bed? I look down to watch, and our foreheads press together; we share our enjoyment of the spectacle we’re making. One of her hands is inside of me, thrusting hard, and we’re each touching ourselves. Her hand on her own sex is moving so quickly she’s almost vibrating; soon each breath is a tiny moan, a litany of desperate desire. In cresting, inexorable waves, pleasure buffets my body. I cry out, jerking up and then going still while everything washes through me. Her hand pushes in, deep as it can go. My vision blacks out and my head spins; I forget, for precious, beautiful seconds, who I am. At the same time, Johanna’s back arches, and all her muscles clench. A shuddering groan escapes her lips and she falls beside me onto the bed, legs askew.

We lie together, panting and quivering, for an age.

When I come back to myself, I realize I’m smiling up into the darkness. She nudges me with her knee, and we both laugh, a little.

I never had her pegged as a genius, but I think Johanna was right about wanting.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks SO MUCH to marta-bee for the exceptionally insightful beta read. 
> 
> Come find me on Tumblr if you like: I'm doctornerdington over there, too. 
> 
> Comments and feedback always appreciated. Hunger Games is far from my main fandom, so I apologize for any grievous canon errors, and can only plead the old AU defence.


End file.
